U.s. `Overestimated` Gorbachev Clout

April 15, 1985|By Terry Atlas, Chicago Tribune.

WASHINGTON — A month after Mikhail Gorbachev rose to the top rung of Kremlin power, U.S. officials are backing away from predictions that the new Soviet leader would rapidly improve relations between Washington and Moscow.

These U.S. officials, joined by some Soviet analysts outside government, say they may have misjudged how quickly the elevation of the relatively youthful Gorbachev, after more than four years of aged and ailing leaders, would bring what they consider positive changes to Soviet foreign policy.

``We overestimated Gorbachev and what he can do,`` said a senior administration official involved in arms control.

Soviet analysts say it has become increasingly clear that Gorbachev`s first priority is to consolidate power by putting supporters into key government and Communist Party jobs. At least until that is done, they say, he is unlikely to risk any major policy changes toward the U.S. that might upset his Politburo elders, with whom his shares much of his power.

The process, says Brent Scowcroft, White House national security adviser in the Ford administration, could take ``a year or two.``

Secretary of State George Shultz has begun an intensive review of U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union for his meeting May 14 in Vienna with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko to discuss a possible meeting this year between President Reagan and Gorbachev.

It appears that the lowering of American expectations for Gorbachev has contributed to a cooling of administration interest in a full-fledged summit in favor of a brief ``get acquainted session.`` Officials said a summit could come later if the U.S. sees progress on arms control and other issues on which the superpowers differ widely.

In Moscow, the Communist Party daily Pravda suggested Sunday that the Soviet Union is ready for regular summit meetings as one way of improving relations with the United States. Pravda took care, however, to make the proposal contingent upon American desire for better relations.

The turning point for a number of U.S. officials was Gorbachev`s public call on Easter for the U.S. to join Moscow in freezing missile deployment in Europe and other measures of arms restaint. The Soviet announcement, not accidentally, came as thousands of people joined traditional Easter peace demonstrations throughout Western Europe and was seen as a public relations coup for Gorbachev that would put the U.S. on the defensive.

But his initiative was greeted in Washington with a nearly audible sigh of relief. What officials had feared most was that Gorbachev would play on his reputation in the West to put forward an innovative proposal that would create new friction between the U.S. and allied governments.

His plan surprised U.S. officials, said one, only by ``how unoriginal, uninspiring, how tired and poor the idea was.`` A freeze on the level of American missiles in Western Europe would lock in a large Soviet advantage, officials said, in a view shared by allies who quickly rejected Gorbachev`s proposal.

In the West, Gorbachev has been seen as a break, at least in style, from past Soviet leaders. He`s younger, better educated and more articulate and has a stylish wife who has been a hit with photographers. His reputation was sealed when British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, not known for her compliments of Soviet leaders, said she could do business with him.

After speaking with Gorbachev after the funeral of Konstantin Chernenko last month, Shultz told administration associates that he was a natural politician who seemed to have a sense of how to influence Western public opinion.

For the Reagan administration, the Geneva arms-control negotiations are being taken as one indicator of Soviet attitudes.

U.S. officials were encouraged when the Politburo, said to have been led by Gorbachev, directed that the arms-control talks proceed last month despite Chernenko`s death on the eve of their scheduled start.

But that optimism has faded. ``So far in Geneva, I haven`t seen any signs they want to move quickly,`` said a senior State Department official in the negotations.

Administration officials believe that Gorbachev`s Easter pronouncement may signal Moscow`s decision to gear up a propaganda campaign to rebuild its public image on arms control. That image was hurt particularly in Western Europe by the Kremlin`s decision to stay away from the negotiating table for more than a year after walking out on arms talks in December, 1983.

Soviet officials assert that the problem is in Washington. The Soviet ambassador to the U.S., Anatoly Dobrynin, said the Geneva talks have been slowed by the Reagan administration`s refusal to provide details of its planned missile-defense program, which American officials deny.

Relations between the Soviet Union and United States are ``tense, complicated and unstable,`` Dobrynin said at a weekend conference on arms control at Atlanta`s Emory University, organized and conducted by former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford.

A number of participants at the conference, which included current and former U.S. government officials, were surprised by Moscow`s decision to send such a high-ranking Soviet delegation, which included not only Dobrynin but also a leading Soviet physicist and a senior member of the Soviet Foreign Ministry.